Hands-on with LG’s dual-screen V10 smartphone and LTE Watch Urbane

Three cameras, two displays, and a smartwatch that doubles as a telephone.

NEW YORK—LG officially unveiled its V10 smartphone today at an event in New York City, and we were able to get some time with the new handset. We also got a sneak peek at the company's newest version of the Watch Urbane, now with LTE connectivity.

While the V10 doesn't differ much from LG's G4 smartphone in terms of guts, it does offer some peculiar features, including a dual-display and a duo of front-facing cameras. The LG Watch Urbane gets a slight update in hardware with this version, but the big news is that LG is bringing LTE and cellular service to a wider audience on this smartwatch.

LG V10

The V10's kicker is its ticker—a narrow, "always-on" secondary screen just above the main display that shows small pieces of information. It's the same idea as the edge displays on Samsung's Galaxy Edge line of smartphones, just positioned differently on the handset.

You can use the secondary display when the main display is off in order to receive things like notifications and weather updates. When the main display is on, the ticker can display shortcuts to other apps. It acts just like the main touchscreen, letting you swipe back and forth to reveal more alerts and more tiny app icons, and it doesn't affect anything you may be doing on the main screen, like watching a video. LG claims the second screen can do all of this without impacting the phone's battery life—we'll have to fully test it to see if this holds true, but the company did create the second screen to automatically shut off when it senses the handset slipping into your pocket or bag.

The LG V10, featuring a 5.7-inch QHD display.

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The narrow second display sits atop the main display, which can be set to "always-on."

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The secondary display gives you notifications, alerts, and shortcuts to apps.

Multi-View Mode is where you can use all three cameras to take a full-experience image or video.

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While it's thin and light, LG designed the V10 to pass military-level durability tests.

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The body is made from stainless steel and silicone.

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It runs Android 5.1.1.

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An LG logo at the bottom of the handset.

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The dual display, when the main display is off.

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The 16 MP rear camera, with the flash and power button.

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Just next to the secondary display at the top lie two 5-megapixel, front-facing cameras that can be used together or separately. If you want to take a selfie alone, one camera should be sufficient with its 80-degree field of view. But if you want to cram all your friends into the photo as well, the two cameras take photos together, stitching the two images into one and expanding the field of view to 120-degrees. There's also a crazy feature called multi-view mode, which turns on all of the V10's three cameras at once for full-experience photos and videos. I could see this coming in handy if you're at a theme park or maybe proposing to your significant other.

Otherwise, the V10 doesn't stray far from the company's most recent flagship smartphone, the G4. It has a 16MP rear camera with all the DSLR-like controls that the G4 offers, including ISO, shutter speed, frame rate, white balance, and focus. These manual controls extend to video as well, letting you shoot HD, FHD, and UHD video while changing those settings during recording. There's also an option to record in a 21:9 aspect ratio.

The main display is a 5.7-inch quad-HD screen and inside is a Snapdragon 808 processor, a removable 3,000 mAh battery, and a slot for a microSD card. LG highlighted the design of the V10 as well—it's made of stainless steel and silicone and was made to pass military-grade durability tests, withstanding drops from up to 48 inches.

Watch Urbane Second Edition LTE

Back at MWC in March, LG released the Watch Urbane and had a model running a webOS-like software with LTE connectivity. It was intended only for the Korean market at the time, but now the new Second Edition LTE will be coming to the US and other countries.

The Second Edition looks nearly identical to the original LG Watch Urbane. The watch has that traditional case design, measuring 44.5 x 14.2mm. The round screen is still a 1.3-inches P-OLEd display, but it has been upgraded to 480 x 480 pixels, which is a slight improvement from the Watch Urbane's 320 x 320 display.

Inside is a 1.2GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 CPU, 4GB of memory, and 760MB of RAM. That's a jump from the 516MB of RAM most smartwatches have, and it will almost certainly be used to bolster its 4G/LTE connectivity. This is Android Wear's first LTE smartwatch, and we're curious to see how well its calling features perform in different types of environments.

Another intriguing upgrade is in the battery: the Second Edition LTE has a 570 mAh battery, which is the biggest battery of any Android Wear watch currently available. There are also two additional, physical buttons on the right side of the case, used as shortcuts to your Contacts and LG Health. Currently these aren't customizable shortcuts, so you'll have to deal with those apps being your go-to programs.

It has two extra buttons that act as shortcuts to your contacts and the LG Health app.

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It now holds a 570 mAh battery, a big boost compared to most smartwatch batteries that are 300-400 mAh.

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Price and availability aren't known yet, but it will come in black, white, and blue band options.

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Unlike the original Watch Urbane, you cannot switch out bands on the Second Edition because the cellular service radio is built into the case where it connects to the band. There will be choices of black, white, and light blue bands though, all made of a silicone material.

Much is still unknown about the Watch Urbane Second Edition LTE—LG teased it at the event, but none of the models had working displays. Supposedly more details of its price and availability will be released in the coming months, but we do know that it will eventually come to AT&T and T-Mobile. The V10 will be launching in Korea first and will launch in the US and China soon after. Again, no price is known yet.